“Everything I make is a socially engaging work. I'm always questioning everything. I'm trying to pose questions for people to look at...by pulling back the curtain.”
—Derrick AdamsVisually appealing and saturated with Adams’ trademark sense of joy and humor, the Game Changing series is a celebration of Black prosperity. Playfully subverting the omnipresence of Caucasian figures in art, media, and miscellany, Adams here recasts the face cards of a traditional playing deck as Black royalty, dressed in 23.5 carat gold leaf. Hewing closely to the cards’ traditional design, Adams still finds room to riff on the figures’ patterning, make-up, and regalia.
Each of Adams’ royal portraits exemplify the artist’s approach to representation as a tool to normalize the Black subject in art. Though Adams does not often portray overtly political scenes, his decision to embrace Black ubiquity is a statement in its own: “The Black figure is so weighted in politics—not of its own doing but because of the things around it—that the only thing I can do is set it free within the narrative of my work.”i
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Romare Bearden, The Conversation, 1979, lithograph in colors, on wove paper. Artwork: © 2024 Romare Bearden Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Adams is in part inspired by Romare Bearden’s fragmented collages, as well as the painters Jacob Lawrence and Emma Amos, whose paintings are populated with references intuitive to a Black audience. Adams here depicts the ‘Ace of Spades’ as a Black man, though the card does not traditionally have a human representation. By doing so, Adams recalls both the pejorative and affectionate uses of that term, used concurrently as a slur and embraced as an idiom by Black writers like Ted Joans and Claude McKay. Here, the card is elevated to the level of royalty, akin to the king or queen, cementing Game Changing as a celebratory, densely symbolic project.
“People brought linoleum from abandoned rolls or loosened bits from kitchen floors. We found rolls of paper here and there. A local ink company gave us cans of drying ink. We had a few old rollers. We learned to use sharp knives pointed away from our own hands and fingers and away from other people. We ranged in age from 5 to maybe 70 or more. We worked together and taught one another. Oh we were dangerous! We were PRESS!”
—Eleanor Magid, Lower East Side Printshop FounderFounded in 1968, the Lower East Side Printshop began as an open access art and community center led by Eleanor Magid in the wake of New York City’s two month-long teachers’ strike. Magid, a local parent and printmaker who had studied under Universal Limited Art Editions master printer Robert Blackburn, transcended the typical art education curriculum by showing her daughter’s classmates and neighbors the ropes of printmaking through the creation of books, stories, and illustrations on a press in her home. Once teachers reached a resolution and schools restarted, Magid kept her studio open for collaborative printmaking. The homegrown operation quickly expanded beyond Magid’s space, moving to the East Village, where the operation soon became part of the alternative spaces movement of the 1970s, offering groundbreaking 24-hour studio use nestled in the buzzing artistic and cultural hub of East 4th Street.
Lower East Side Printshop at its old location on East 4th Street, 1980s. Courtesy of Lower East Side Printshop. Expanding their space yet again, in 2005 the organization relocated from the East Village to a facility five times larger in Midtown Manhattan, and the DIY spirit that inspired the start of the Printshop continued to prosper. Over its nearly 70-year history, the Printshop has become a premier non-profit New York City printmaking studio and resource that supports contemporary artists of all career stages and artistic backgrounds. Through the Printshop’s residency programs – which have hosted the likes of Derrick Adams, Jeffrey Gibson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Dread Scott, Kara Walker, James Siena, and Hank Willis Thomas, among others – artist’s receive support through access to facilities, time, stipends, and technical assistance.
In 2006, the Printshop was awarded Primary Organization status by the New York State Council on the Arts. This status is reserved for organizations that are, by the quality of their services and their stature, particularly vital to the cultural life of the state. Such designation is a testament to the important work of the Lower East Side Printshop, providing valuable resources that strengthen the artistic community of New York and promote the growth of the printmaking discipline.
Lower East Side Printshop logo, with their ink roller chopmark. i Amanda Gluibizzi, “Derrick Adams with Amanda Gluibizzi,” Brooklyn Rail, 2023, online.
Catalogue Essay
Including: Jack; Queen; King; and Ace
Artist Biography
Derrick Adams
American • 1970
Through the mediums of collage, video, sculpture and drawing, Brooklyn-based artist Derrick Adams explores the way mass media affects identity, particularly in the context of African Americans in contemporary culture.
In his collage works mimicking television screens, Adams takes his source imagery from screen captures of old clips from YouTube, which he then uses as reference. “The images come from…everything from ‘Good Times’ to ‘Coming to America’ to Oprah on the news…These images I’m taking from all these shows—from comedy to news or whatever—all are representations of black characterization…These images can be problematic because they’re such a high-animated state that they become more like caricatures of themselves”. In rendering these reference images with blocks of color, Adams confronts the media’s deconstruction of reality.
Property from the Lower East Side Printshop Archives
2
Game Changing
2015
The complete set of four screenprints in colors with gold leaf, on Magnani Incisioni paper, the full sheets.
all S. 30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm)
All signed, dated and annotated 'LESP' in pencil (Lower East Side Printshop archive proofs, the edition was 16 and 3 artist's proofs), published by the Lower East Side Printshop, Inc., New York (with their blindstamp), all unframed.
Estimate
$15,000 - 25,000
Sold for $25,400
editions@phillips.com
212-940-1220
Editions & Selected Works from the Lower East Side Printshop Archives: Online Auction
4 - 11 September 2024
109
This lot is no longer available.
